Steven Yan

Former CPO @ironclad_inc • prev @zendesk • Amateur K1 and surfski paddler • I like to take landscape photos

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

@briannekimmel I used to live in one of the town homes in your photo. Foster City is underrated!

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

New @ChatGPTapp 4o Image Generation is pretty good. Everything up to this point has failed at this prompt.

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

Added a new game mechanic to the family White Elephant gift exchange this year and it turned into a fun design project.

Art: DALL-E
Layout: Google Slides
Materials: Printed free at the library and 15 year old card stock from our wedding
Assembly: X-ACTO knife and a glue stick

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

This resonates with a sneaking feeling I've been getting as my codebase get more complex when building with Cursor. For me, at some point the utility flips from writing the code to ideating on direction so I can write the code.

[Sully @SullyOmarr]

Agreed but I still think it’s incredibly powerful for new projects

Problem is as your codebase gets larger it becomes harder for Claude to figure out what’s going on, ends up making tiny bugs

So you spend 1 hour trying to fix it with composer/chat, but eventually just realize it’s better to do it manually

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

Turns out that ChatGPT crushes hunting down herbal soup ingredients at 99 Ranch. It even found ginseng which was labeled with a *completely* different name. Second gen Cantonese children rejoice!

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

@kevinyien @stripe Excited for you Kevin!

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

"Man climbs down into the valley below". Again, nailed the landscape...but then I become a white male with two heads.

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

I'm reminded of that one time in high school that a member of the varsity football team dropped in to our Magic: The Gathering game at the library and we felt instantly cooler. 👋🏼 welcome @Replit !

[Amjad Masad @amasad]

Replit left San Francisco for Foster City.

The "why" we're leaving is boring, sad, and predictable (crime, dysfunction, etc), so instead let me tell you why we chose Foster City.

Foster City embodies the American post-war optimism and the long-lost California pro-growth mentality.

in 1958 businessman Jack Foster set out to build "a master-planned community concept"; in 1960 bought Brewer Island, a largely undeveloped land used for salt evaporation and dairy farming; in 1961 started building, and in 1964, the first family moved in. By 1966, more than 5,000 people were living there. Can you imagine how long it would take to build such a project today?

The city is also known for its innovative engineering, particularly its "Venice-like" lagoon system. Instead of employing massive landfills to elevate the terrain for development, engineers devised a system of lagoons that provided essential drainage and a super cool aesthetic landscape.

Finally, the city is super livable. When Haya and I moved to California, we first took residence there and, in fact, incorporated Replit here. Our first bank was Wells Fargo, a few steps from our new office.

It's relatively affordable compared to the rest of the Bay Area and has a healthy mix of residential, commercial, and recreational spaces. Downtown San Mateo is a bridge away, a fun place to hang out or live.

Finally, in the Bay Area, almost every town has an associated iconic tech company. When you think of Mountain View, you think of Google; when you think of Cupertino, you think of Apple. My hope is that in the future, when you think of Foster City, you'll think of Replit.

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

@kevinyien Can't find in Austin or online? Do we need to go shopping when you're next back in SF?

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

@gogwilt Nougat 4LYFE

[scott belsky @scottbelsky]

when it comes to nailing product-market fit, empathy > passion. too many builders are motivated by vision as opposed to understanding what their customers are actually struggling with (often nuanced, psychological, and surprising).

passion is the red herring of product - often yielding results many degrees off.

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

Wouldn’t be here without our amazing customers who have been incredible partners to our team! 🙏🏻🚀

[Ironclad @ironclad_inc]

We’re excited to announce that Ironclad is a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Contract Life Cycle Management.

[Jason Boehmig @jboehmig]

1/ I think there's a very real chance that the consumer experience around AI peaked in summer 2023 and won't get better for the next decade.

But that's not the bad news you might think it is.

A 🧵 on AI and the law 👇

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

Wrapping up first half of the year at @ironclad_inc with happy hour and demos!

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

💯 It's the difference between having investment conversations vs limiting yourselves to budgeting conversations.

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

Incredible.

[Nicolas Neubert @iamneubert]

It's not often that something truly blows me away, but this is absolutely mind-blowing. This artist created an incredible stop-motion time-lapse!

Just think about the countless frames they had to shoot! 🤯

Source: @insta360 YouTube
Credit: 不自由摄影师winga on BiliBili

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

@johncutlefish Don't disagree that it's very hard, but I do think the benefit of having that engine in this environment could provide a window of urgency to drive the cultural change required. I think that's some of the toughest inertia to overcome.

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

@mboverell @ironclad_inc This is specifically an onboarding ritual, but we could definitely expand. In fact I was inspired to maybe present 3 year observations.

We also mix it up in other ways, like getting insight into our APM program:

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

The most eye-opening session of our FY23 PM kickoff today was having @swethapraba and @Rishabh1Anand present on their first 6 months as Associate PMs at @ironclad_inc . A few key learnings: 👇🏼

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

Fav team ritual: at @ironclad_inc new PMs present 30 day observations to the team, no topics off limits. Fresh eyes + the PM ability to cut to the ❤️ of a problem leads to very humbling feedback for me as a leader. Bonus: the ensuing team discussion beats any Pulse survey results

[Steven Yan @steeveage]

@jespr @ironclad_inc Maybe, but regardless the takeaways have been pretty dead on